Free TDEE Calculator for Daily Calories, BMR and Macros

Ask ten people how many calories they burn in a day and you'll get ten confident guesses, most of them wrong. Some work it out from a fitness watch that can be out by hundreds. Others repeat a number they once saw on a forum. This free TDEE calculator swaps the guesswork for a proper estimate. Enter your sex, age, weight, height and how active you are, and it works out your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, the calories your body uses in a normal day, then turns that into a daily calorie target for losing weight, staying put or gaining.

It is built as a TDEE calculator UK readers can use in whatever units they think in: kilograms or pounds, centimetres or feet and inches, even a mix of the two. Because the results screen also shows your BMR, BMI, healthy weight range and daily protein, carbs and fat, it doubles as a BMR calculator, a BMI calculator and a simple macro calculator. There is no sign-up, no email box and nothing to install.

What you get from a single calculation:

• Your maintenance calories (TDEE), split into resting energy (BMR) and everything on top of it
• Five weekly goals to choose from, ranging from losing half a kilo a week to gaining the same
• A daily calorie target for the goal you pick, with a safety floor built in
• Daily protein, carbs and fat in grams, adding up to your target
• Your BMI and the healthy weight range for your height

What Is TDEE and How to Calculate It?

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the total number of calories your body burns across 24 hours, everything from keeping your heart beating to walking to the shop. Eat roughly that many calories and your weight tends to stay put. Eat less for long enough and it drifts down; eat more and it climbs. That's why TDEE is also called your maintenance calories, and why this tool works as a maintenance calories calculator too. If you've ever typed "how many calories do I burn in a day" into Google, this is the number you were really after.

Your TDEE is made of four parts:

• BMR (basal metabolic rate): the energy needed just to keep you alive at rest. Breathing, circulation, cell repair, staying warm. For most people it is the biggest slice, somewhere around 60 to 70 per cent of the total.
• Digesting food: chewing, digesting and absorbing what you eat costs energy too, roughly a tenth of your intake.
• Everyday movement: walking around, chores, standing, typing, fidgeting. Nutritionists call it NEAT, and it varies enormously between people with similar jobs.
• Exercise: workouts you do on purpose. For plenty of people this is smaller than they expect.

So how do you calculate TDEE? In short: estimate your BMR from your sex, age, weight and height, then multiply it by an activity factor between 1.2 and 1.9. The calculator above does both steps for you, and the section on calculating TDEE by hand shows the full maths if you like to check things yourself.

How to Use This TDEE Calculator, Step by Step

The calculator sits at the top of this page and takes about thirty seconds. Here is what every part of it does, in the order you'll meet it.

1. Pick your sex

Tap Male or Female. The resting-metabolism equations were built from measured data and carry a different constant for each (plus 5 for men, minus 161 for women), largely because men on average carry more lean muscle at the same weight. Choose the option that matches the body you're estimating for.

2. Enter your age

Whole years, between 18 and 90. Age matters because resting metabolism drifts down as the years pass; the main formula takes off 5 calories a day for every year. The calculator is for adults only, because these equations were not designed for growing bodies.

3. Enter your weight in kg or lb

Type your weight, then use the small kg | lb switch in the top corner of the Weight card to choose the unit. Flip it halfway through and the number converts for you, so you never have to do the maths. It accepts 30 to 300 kg (about 66 to 661 lb). If you can, weigh yourself first thing in the morning, after the loo and before breakfast. It strips out a surprising amount of day-to-day noise.

4. Enter your height in cm or feet and inches

The Height card has its own switch, cm | ft. In cm mode you get one box. In ft mode you get two, one for feet and one for inches, so 5 ft 9 in goes in as 5 and 9. Height can be anything from 120 to 230 cm, roughly 3 ft 11 in to 7 ft 6 in. The weight and height switches are independent, which means a TDEE calculator in kg and cm, one in lb and feet, or a mix such as lb with cm all work.

5. Choose your activity level

Five bars sit in a row, from Desk to Athlete. Tap one and the multiplier in the top corner (for example ×1.375) and the one-line description underneath change straight away. This is the setting people get wrong most often, so there is a whole section on it just below.

6. Add your body fat (optional)

Leave this box empty if you don't know your body fat percentage. If you have a decent measurement from a DEXA scan, skinfold calipers or a good smart scale, type it in (anything from 3 to 60 per cent). The calculator then switches from Mifflin-St Jeor to the Katch-McArdle formula, which works from lean body mass rather than total weight. A guessed number is worse than a blank, so only use it when you trust it.

7. Press Calculate

Hit Calculate my TDEE, or press Enter on your keyboard. A thin progress line runs across the button for a moment and the results slide in. If a box has a problem, it shakes, turns red and shows the allowed range so you can fix it quickly. Reset puts everything back to the starting values.

8. Reading your results

• Header bar: a one-line summary of what you entered, an Edit button that takes you back to the form, and a round reset button.
• Your maintenance calories: the big number is your TDEE in kcal a day. Under it, a two-colour bar splits it into resting energy (BMR) and activity plus digestion. The two figures always add up to the total.
• Your goal, per week: five buttons. In kg mode they read −0.5, −0.25, Keep weight, +0.25 and +0.5 kg; in lb mode, −1, −0.5, Keep weight, +0.5 and +1 lb. Tap one and everything below updates instantly, no need to recalculate.
• Eat this each day: your daily calorie target, with a pill showing how far it sits from maintenance, such as −550 kcal. If a deficit would push you below 1,200 (women) or 1,500 (men) calories, the calculator holds you at that floor and tells you why. If your maintenance is already below it, it keeps you at maintenance and suggests moving more instead of cutting.
• Daily macros: grams of protein, carbs and fat, each with its share of your calories. On wider screens you also see the calories from each and a rough grams-per-meal figure for three meals a day.
• BMI and healthy weight: your BMI with a label (Underweight, Healthy, Overweight or Obese) and the weight range for your height at a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, shown in whichever weight unit you chose.
• Footer line: which formula was used, your activity factor, and the protein per kilogram behind your macros.

TDEE Calculator Activity Level: Which One Is Yours?

Activity level is a multiplier applied to your BMR, and because it scales the whole result, a wrong pick is the biggest single source of error. The table shows the five options in the calculator.

Factors are the standard ones used alongside the Mifflin-St Jeor equation.

A few honest pointers. Count your whole week, not just the gym: a desk worker who lifts three times is usually "Light", not "Moderate", because the other 160-odd hours are spent sitting. A builder or a nurse on their feet all shift who never trains can reasonably start at "Moderate". "Extra active" is rare. It fits people with a physically heavy job on top of regular training, or athletes in a hard training block, and picking it because you did one good week is how people end up eating too much. If you're torn between two levels, choose the lower one. After two or three weeks of real data you can nudge it up.

How to Calculate TDEE by Hand

You don't need to take the calculator's word for anything. The method is two steps: find your BMR, then multiply it by your activity factor.

Mifflin-St Jeor calculator: the default formula

Published in 1990 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, this equation became the standard because it predicts resting energy use within about 10 per cent of measured values more often than the older alternatives. With weight in kilograms, height in centimetres and age in years:

Try it with the calculator's starting example, a 26-year-old man who weighs 70 kg, stands 172 cm tall and is lightly active. Ten times 70 is 700. Six and a quarter times 172 is 1,075. Five times 26 is 130. So 700 + 1,075 − 130 + 5 gives a BMR of 1,650. Multiply by 1.375 and you get 2,268.75, which the calculator rounds to 2,269 kcal a day.

Katch-McArdle calculator: when you know your body fat

This formula ignores height, age and sex, and looks only at lean body mass, meaning everything that isn't fat:

It earns its keep for people who are unusually lean, very muscular or carrying a lot of fat, where weight alone misleads. Take a 30-year-old man at 80 kg and 180 cm who is moderately active. Without body fat, Mifflin-St Jeor gives a BMR of 1,780 and a TDEE of 2,759. Enter 15 per cent body fat and his lean mass is 68 kg, so the BMR becomes 370 + (21.6 × 68) = 1,839 and the TDEE 2,850. A difference of about 90 calories, not dramatic, but a good sign that both formulas agree he's in the same neighbourhood.

TDEE vs BMR: What Is the Difference?

People mix these two up constantly, and it leads to real mistakes. BMR is what you'd burn lying still all day. TDEE is BMR plus everything you do on top. TDEE is always the bigger number, and for most adults it's around 20 to 90 per cent higher.

RMR is resting metabolic rate, measured under slightly looser conditions than BMR.

The practical rule: set your calorie target from TDEE, never from BMR. A BMR of 1,650 is not a diet; it's the energy your body spends before you've stood up, eaten lunch or walked anywhere. Plan your eating around the TDEE-based figure in the "Eat this each day" card and treat BMR as background information.

How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight?

It depends on you, which is exactly why a generic "1,500 a day" answer is unhelpful. The sensible method is to start from your own TDEE and subtract a modest deficit. Used as a TDEE calculator for weight loss and as a calorie deficit calculator in one, it does the subtraction for you: pick a loss goal and the "Eat this each day" card shows the result.

The sums behind it use a long-standing rule of thumb: a kilogram of body fat holds roughly 7,700 calories (about 3,500 per pound). Losing 0.5 kg a week therefore needs a shortfall of about 3,850 calories over seven days, or 550 a day. Losing 0.25 kg needs 275 a day. In pound mode the figures are 500 and 250 a day, for 1 lb and half a pound a week. Be aware it's a guide rather than a law. Real-life weight loss often starts faster (water leaves first) and slows as your body adapts, so treat the weekly figure as an estimate.

Here is what the five goals look like for the calculator's starting example (the 26-year-old man, TDEE 2,269):

Example only. Your own numbers will differ.

What the NHS says, and why this isn't an NHS calorie calculator

If you searched for an NHS calorie calculator, to be clear: this is an independent tool, not an NHS one. But the principle is the same. NHS guidance puts the average man at about 2,500 calories a day and the average woman at about 2,000, and suggests cutting around 600 a day to lose 0.5 to 1 kg (1 to 2 lb) a week. That answers the question many people type in as "how many calories a day NHS" recommends, with the caveat that those are population averages, not personal targets.

Population averages from UK guidance. Your TDEE could sit several hundred calories either side.

The calculator tops out at 0.5 kg (or 1 lb) a week on purpose. That is at the gentle end of the NHS range, and bigger deficits are harder to stick to and need more care. It also never lets a deficit drop you below 1,200 calories for women or 1,500 for men, widely used lower limits for intake without medical supervision. Take the fourth example further down: a smaller, inactive woman whose maintenance is 1,403 calories. A 550-calorie deficit would leave her on 853, so the tool holds her at 1,200 and says so. Her real deficit is only about 200 a day, which means slow progress, and the honest advice is to add movement rather than eat less.

Once you're underway, our weight loss percentage calculator is a handy way to see how far you've come as a share of your starting weight.

TDEE Calculator for Weight Gain and How Many Calories to Maintain Weight

Using this as a TDEE calculator for weight gain works the same way in reverse: choose +0.25 or +0.5 kg (or +0.5 or +1 lb) and the target moves above maintenance by 275 or 550 calories (250 or 500 in pounds). Keep it modest. A bigger surplus mostly adds fat, and building muscle is slower than the scale suggests, even with good training. That's also why protein is set to 1.8 g per kilogram when you pick a gain goal.

If you simply want to know how many calories to maintain weight, choose Keep weight. The "Eat this each day" figure is then identical to your TDEE. Expect the scale to wobble by a kilo or two from day to day even when you hit it perfectly. Salt, carbs, hormones and the weight of food still in your gut all move the number without touching your body fat.

Maintenance calories in the UK, as everywhere, are personal. The averages of 2,500 and 2,000 are useful for planning a food shop, not for setting your own intake. Our four worked examples below have maintenance figures running from about 1,400 to about 2,300 calories a day, which is a very wide spread for four ordinary adults.

TDEE Calculator With Macros: Protein, Carbs and Fat

Calories tell you how much to eat; macros describe what it's made of. The calculator builds yours in a fixed order. Protein comes first, set per kilogram of bodyweight and depending on your goal. Fat is then fixed at 27 per cent of your calories, comfortably inside the commonly recommended 20 to 35 per cent range. Carbohydrate takes up whatever calories remain. Protein and carbs both contain 4 calories per gram, fat contains 9. Put together, that makes this a TDEE calculator for weight loss with macros: one result gives you the calories and the protein, carbs and fat that fill them.

All three sit within the 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg range commonly used in sports nutrition research.

One detail worth knowing: if your BMI is above 25, the calculator works out protein from the weight you'd be at a BMI of 25 rather than your actual weight. Otherwise a person carrying a lot of extra fat would be told to eat a protein target far bigger than their lean tissue needs. So as a simple protein calculator it errs on the sensible side for larger bodies.

Here are the starting example's macros when losing 0.5 kg a week:

On the common question of how much protein to eat to lose weight: this tool uses 2.0 g per kg during a deficit, because higher protein helps you hold on to muscle while the scale drops. For context, the basic official minimum for healthy adults is around 0.8 g per kg. That figure is a baseline to avoid deficiency, not a target for someone dieting or training.

BMI and Healthy Weight Range

The last card on the results screen shows your BMI, which is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in metres squared, together with the range of weights that would put you between BMI 18.5 and 24.9 at your height. In effect it's a quick healthy weight range calculator. Here are the standard bands, with the weights they correspond to at 172 cm:

Weights rounded to the nearest kilogram.

BMI is a screening tool and a blunt one. It can't tell muscle from fat, so a muscular person may land in "Overweight" while being lean, and it says nothing about where weight is carried. Use it as one number among several. If you want a fuller breakdown, try our BMI calculator UK version.

Units: kg, lb, Stone, cm and Feet

If you're after a TDEE calculator in kg and cm, you're covered. The same goes for a TDEE calculator in lb and feet. Weight and height each have their own switch, so you can pick any combination, and your results follow your weight unit: goal buttons read in kg or lb, and your healthy weight range shows in the same unit.

Stone is the one unit the form doesn't take directly. If you think in stone and pounds, convert to pounds first by multiplying the stones by 14 and adding the loose pounds. For example, 11 st 4 lb is 11 × 14 + 4 = 158 lb, about 71.7 kg. If you'd rather not do the sum, our kg to stone and pounds converter does it for you, and works in both directions, so it doubles as a calorie calculator stone pounds helper when you want to turn a result back into the units you use at home.

The pound and inch values are exact international definitions, which is what the calculator uses.

Worked Examples: Four People, Four Different Answers

Numbers are easier to trust when you can watch them work. Here are four made-up people run through the calculator, each aiming to lose about 0.5 kg (1 lb) a week.

Heights 172, 165, 178 and 160 cm. Activity: Light, Light, Sedentary, Sedentary. Figures in kcal a day.

• The 26-year-old man has a BMR of 1,650 and a TDEE of 2,269. Eating 1,719 calories gives him 140 g protein, 173 g carbs and 52 g fat.
• The 35-year-old woman has a BMR of 1,395 and a TDEE of 1,918, so her target is 1,368. Her BMI is 25.7, so her protein is based on the weight at BMI 25 (about 68 kg) rather than her actual 70 kg, giving 136 g.
• The 45-year-old man has a BMR of 1,893 and a TDEE of 2,271. His BMI is 31.6, so protein comes from about 79 kg, not 100 kg: 158 g a day instead of 200 g.
• The 58-year-old woman has a BMR of 1,169 and a TDEE of 1,403. The full deficit would drop her to 853 calories, so the calculator holds her at 1,200 and explains why.

Look at the first and third rows. One man is 30 kg heavier than the other, yet their maintenance calories are almost identical (2,269 and 2,271), because the younger man is more active and the older one isn't. Weight alone tells you very little. That's the whole reason these calculators ask for four or five inputs instead of one.

How Accurate Is a TDEE Calculator? Getting the Most From Your Result

Straight answer: it's a good estimate, not a measurement. Studies of the Mifflin-St Jeor equation show it lands within roughly 10 per cent of measured resting energy use for most healthy adults, and activity adds more uncertainty on top. Genetics, medication, sleep, hormones and how much you fidget all push your real number around. So use the result as a starting line, then let your own body give feedback:

• Be honest about activity. If in doubt, pick the lower level.
• Follow your target for two to three weeks before judging it, and compare weekly average weights rather than single mornings.
• Adjust in small steps. If nothing is moving, change intake by 100 to 200 calories, not 500.
• Recalculate as you change. Your TDEE falls as you lose weight, which is one reason progress slows. Updating the numbers every 5 kg (about 10 lb) or when your routine changes keeps the target realistic.
• Don't eat your exercise back. Your activity level already includes your usual training, so adding watch-calories on top double counts.

Water plays a bigger part than most people expect. A salty takeaway or a poor night's sleep can hide a good week of fat loss behind a temporary bump on the scales. If you're unsure how much you should be drinking, our water intake calculator gives a sensible daily figure.

Who Should Take Extra Care With Calorie Targets?

This tool is for healthy adults. Please speak to your GP or a registered dietitian before changing your diet if any of these apply:

• You're under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding
• You have diabetes, a thyroid condition, kidney disease or any other long-term health condition
• You take medication that affects appetite or weight
• You have ever had an eating disorder, or counting calories makes you anxious

And if you ever feel dizzy, constantly cold, exhausted or preoccupied with food while following a calorie target, stop and get advice. A number on a screen is never more important than how you feel.

This article and calculator are for general information only and are not medical advice.

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